Endnote 15 – The Missing Link

The scribe probably meant to write kml’wt. It is to be analyzed either as a qal infinitive construct (the form appears in several orthographies at Qumrân: mwl’t [1QS 6:17, 18, 21]; mwlw’t [1QSa 1:10]; mlw’t [1QS 7:20, 22]; mwlwt [4Q511 63 III: 2 (Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4, DJD 7 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1982], pp. 248–249)]) or more likely as the pi‘el infinitive construct of ml’ with the preposition k used in a temporal sense. In the Bible, the qal infinitive means “to fulfill a certain number of days, years,” etc. In the qal it means in this context “to fulfill” or “to confirm” one’s word or oath (see, for example, 1 Kings 1:14).